


Team Bus Goes Shopping Somewhere They Shouldn't

by ChandaK562



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Straightjackets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-18 23:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2365331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChandaK562/pseuds/ChandaK562
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Team Bus goes shopping for a straightjacket for Coulson after the events in the season finale.  Really, their base only has so many walls, and the writing is getting annoying, so what are they to do?  But what store might stock straightjackets, and what if they run into someone they know there?</p><p>I know I have other stories I should be writing on an updating, but when an idea hits I have to get it out, and after the trauma of this week's episode I have to do something to comfort myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Skye, are you sure this is the right place?" Jemma said as she stepped out of the van and stared up at the rambling Victorian house in confusion. This looked like someone's home, not a business.

Skye looked at the directions on her phone again. "This is the address, and there's the sign. LaRues. This is it. Let's go." She started up the walk to the door, with Jemma, Fitz and Trip following behind her. She couldn't believe they were here to get a straightjacket for AC. And if it was the GH 325, how long would it be until she needed a straightjacket too?

A bell jingled as they opened the door and stepped inside.

"Skye…." Jemma's eyes went large as she took in the front room of the store. Lingerie, handcuffs and was that a display case filled with x-rated deserts?

"This isn't a medical supply store." Trip said. "Skye, I thought you talked to these people and they said…"

"The lady I talked to on the phone said they had straightjackets." Skye said with a wince. A sex store. If AC found out that she had brought Jemma and Fitz to a sex store…. She wasn't entirely sure that Fitz wasn't still a virgin. "She sounded like she was eighty. I didn't think…"

"They have food. That's good." Fitz didn't look up from the desert display as he spoke. "We can get something to go, right? Because what Koenig served last night was not desert."

Before Skye could say anything about how bad bringing home x-rated food would be, the tiniest woman she had ever seen came bustling in, tray of cookies in hand.

"Can I help you? I'm Effie LaRue." Eighty. Well, she had been right, the woman was at least eighty but apparently being a senior citizen didn't mean you were opposed to working in a sex store. And apparently being eighty didn't mean you had to dress eighty either because the little woman had red streaks running through her fluffy, grey hair.

"I called a few hours ago?" Skye said. "I was looking for a straightjacket?"

"I remember. Is it for one of you? We offer a custom fit option." Effie said as she held out the tray of cookies in response to Fitz's hungry expression.

"It's for our boss. We have his size. Regular jacket size works for a straightjacket, right?" Skye said since Jemma seemed too horrified by where she had found herself to speak, Fitz was busy eating, and Trip, he had worked with John Garrett, why was being in a sex store shocking him?

"That should do for a start." Effie said. "Straightjackets are down the hall, second door on the right. My niece is somewhere in the back dusting if you need any help. Take your time looking. There will be chocolate smores bars in a few minutes if you're hungry."

"Fitz, why don't you wait here for the bars?" Trip finally shook himself out of his shock at the store they had ended up in. "Jemma…"

"You might need help with sizing." Jemma winced, not really wanting to go any further, but feeling she had to. She followed the other two agents, keeping her eyes partially closed as they headed down the hall.

Eyes closed, even partially, not a good idea, Jemma realized a few minutes later, wandering around the house that was really much bigger than it seemed, totally lost amongst the small rooms and alcoves. But all of the merchandise…. She felt her face turning red as she ducked her head, and the next thing she knew, she was on the ground after plowing right into someone and sending them tumbling.

"I am so sorry!" Jemma exclaimed. "Are you alright? I am so sorry and…." But then the woman turned and she saw her face. Faster than she thought possible, she was on her feet and fleeing, shrieking as she went.

"Jemma?" Skye and Trip appeared in the hall in front of her, stopping her flight. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Are you okay?" Trip asked. "You look like you just saw a ghost!"

"I did! Agent Hand! I just saw Agent Hand's ghost! She's come back to haunt us!"


	2. Chapter 2

"You saw Agent Hand's ghost?" Skye said.

Jemma nodded as she fought back tears. Agent Hand had come back to haunt them. She wasn't surprised, not really. After all, it had been a member of their team who had murdered her. And they hadn't taken any steps to recover her body or have a service for her. With the Hydra situation and Ward, and now what was happening with Director Coulson, Agent Hand had completely slipped through the cracks. Jemma felt tears slipping down her cheeks and she didn't try to hold them back now. Poor Agent Hand. She had done so much for Shield and then they had just let her slip through the cracks. It wasn't fair and it was really no wonder that she had came back to haunt them.

"Hey, it's okay." Trip said. "What happened?"

Jemma blinked, trying to pull herself together. "I was trying not to look too much at everything, and I must have taken a wrong turn because when I looked up the two of you were gone. I was trying to find you, but there are so many little rooms, I got turned around and I was still trying not to look. And then I bumped something, and she was right there! Agent Hand! She's came back to haunt us!"

"Agent Hand's haunting a sex shop. Is anyone really surprised by that?" Skye murmured. "Jemma, calm down, it's okay."

"You were trying not to look at the stuff in here, right?" Trip said. "So you were trying not to look, you bumped into someone and maybe you thought it was Agent Hand because you didn't get a good look at them. That has to be what happened."

"Agent Hand?" Fitz said as he hurried down the hall, his arms loaded down with packages and a shocked expression on his face. "You saw her too?"

"Fitz?" Skye said as she looked closer at the items he was carrying. "Why do you have ten packages of edible underwear, and is that chocolate body paint?"

"I was looking for some dip for the smores bars, and some snacks for later. Agent Hand, Jemma, you saw her too?"

"I did." Jemma said. "Back that way. Fitz, you saw her too?"

Fitz nodded. "I was just trying the chocolate, and maybe I opened one of the packs to make sure it was fresh for the ride home and then she was there! She just popped up out of nowhere and yelled at me to stop eating things I hadn't paid for! She told me to get out! She wanted to know if Coulson knew I was here! It was her!"

"It was her! She's come back to haunt us! She must blame us for her death! I knew it was her, I just knew it!" Jemma moaned.

"Calm down! Both of you calm down!" Skye told them. "Come on, we don't need to draw attention, remember? It couldn't have been Agent Hand's ghost. Fitz, you were eating. How good a look could you have gotten anyway? It had to have been another customer, or didn't Ms. LaRue say something about a niece?"

"She mentioned Coulson, though. How would the ghost have known about Coulson unless it was Agent Hand?" Fitz asked.

"Maybe we let something slip?" Trip suggested, even though he was almost sure they hadn't.

"Or maybe Agent Hand is haunting us. Maybe she blames us for her death! Or for not giving her a proper funeral!" Jemma moaned.

"Come on. She's been dead for awhile. If she was going to haunt us, wouldn't she have shown up before now?" Although maybe the store they were visiting had lead to the ghostly appearance? No, Skye was not going to let herself go down that road. That road could only lead to a permanent ghostly presence. 

"Excuse me, but is there some sort of problem?" Effie called as she came down the hall. "I thought I heard shouting."

"A ghost! We saw a ghost!" Fitz exclaimed before Skye or Trip could think of some sort of cover story.

"A ghost?" Effie said. "You saw her?"

"Saw…. Wait, there is a ghost here?" Trip asked.

"There used to be an old tavern here." Effie said with a nod. "Parts of it were actually used when the house was built. The story is that the tavern keeper's daughter walked the halls of the old building, and some people have said they they spotted her in the old sections of this house, but I can't say I've ever seen anything myself." She looked closely at Fitz and Jemma. "The two of you really did see something?"

"It was horrible." Jemma murmured.

"Terrifying!" Fitz said.

"I can't say that the ghost has ever done much more than startle people before but apparently she really shook the two of you up. Why don't you come to the front and have some cookies to calm your nerves? Everything's better after cookies."

"Are the two of you okay?" Skye asked as they got into the van after a much longer stay for cookies than they had planned.

Jemma nodded, even though she still felt a cold chill just thinking of what she had seen. Agent Hand, she was sure it had been Agent Hand, but nothing else had happened the entire time they were there. Could she have been mistaken? As they pulled out of the parking lot she turned to look back at the house, and then gasped. There, going down a path in the rear, it was Agent Hand! "Drive! Quick!" She shouted as she grabbed for Fitz. It hadn't been a mistake! It hadn't been some other ghost! Agent Hand had came back to haunt them!


	3. Chapter 3

Victoria almost stumbled and fell, she was shaking so badly from pain, as she pushed the door to the carriage house open.

"Vic?" John Garrett spun and shoved the box he had been about to move back onto the shelf before hurrying over to her. "Your head?" Why was he even asking, though? He knew the problem was her head and one of the migraines that were the result of the gunshot wounds and concussion she had suffered two months before. "Let's get you in bed." He wrapped an arm around her as she swayed and he was honestly tempted to pick her up and carry her to keep her from falling before she could make it to bed. "Have you had your meds?"

She shook her head as she collapsed on the larger of the two beds set up in the rear room of the carriage house. "Too bad, too fast. Shot."

"Shot. Okay. Okay." Did he remember what the doctor Vic's aunt had called in had said about the shots he had prescribed in case of pain that didn't respond to the oral meds? Vic had only been bad enough to need them three or four times, thank heavens, but he was sure he remembered what to do. "Just close your eyes, okay? I'll get the shot for you. You'll feel better in just a few minutes." The curtains were closed, and he flipped the overhead light off after getting the shot ready. He could hear muffled sobs starting as he turned the bedside light on, and sat down on the bed. The loose skirt had been pushed to the top of her right thigh, and with a wince, he pushed the needle in and injected the medication. "Okay, you just try to rest. It should help fast. Did something set it off?"

"Coulson." Victoria murmured.

"Phil? Did he finally get around to calling your family to try to see if they knew where you were? Or to ask what your grandmother meant by what she wrote on the back of that returned condolence card?" There was irritation in John's voice but he couldn't help it. Two months and Vic's family hadn't heard a thing from Phil or from anyone else connected to Shield beyond a condolence card that Victoria's grandmother had promptly marked Return to Sender with a note on the back letting them know that there was no one dead in their family. You would think that would have been enough to get Phil curious enough to make a phone call, but there had been absolutely nothing. Phil was one of his oldest friends, but to see Vic treated this way…. He would have never thought Phil would have pulled something like this.

"His team. The science babies and the special, sparkly hacker, and the one I told you about, Trip, that was supposed to be working with you, only I guess Coulson has him now." Victoria felt tears running down her cheeks. This, she hated this, the total loss of control that hit out of the blue but on top of the migraine she couldn't fight it. "They were here! They didn't know who Aunt Effie was. They were SHOPPING!"

"Shopping? You told me about Phil's team. Are they even old enough to shop in a sex store? Aren't they around twelve? Has Phil even had the talk with them about the birds and the bees yet?"

"He might have even more science babies on his hands soon." Victoria murmured as the tears continued to flow. "Why did he do it? He acts like every person is important. He has that saving people thing and he can't even pick up a phone and call my family? He couldn't be bothered to look for me?"

Her speech was already starting to slur as the meds took effect, but the pain in her voice was obvious. "I don't know what's wrong with Phil." John said. "I can understand about me, and about Jasper but what he's pulling with you…."

"Blames me for the mission I sent his people on. No extraction plan. Test. Felix said he was acting funny. It was just a test. He always checks and triple checks things for his people. Didn't this time. Just blamed me."

"If Phil blames you, I'm going to have a long talk with Phil." John told her. "It's okay, Vic. It's going to be okay."

"I wouldn't let people die. Not for something like that. He blames me. He didn't read the mission reports. Why does he blame me? I wasn't going to leave them there. I had a plan to get them out! He was supposed to read the report! He was supposed to read the report! Felix said he thought something was wrong so I was testing him but I wasn't going to leave his people there! I just needed to know how bad it was, before he actually got someone killed! They blame me. Phil blames me and his team blames me and I think even Melinda blames me and I was just trying to keep people safe!" Victoria was sobbing harder now, any control she had gone even as she started to drift off. "I was just trying to keep people safe. Why don't they see that? Why did they do this?"

"I wish I knew." One good thing about Vic's head hurting bad enough to need the shot. She wouldn't remember breaking down. That seemed to bother her even more than the pain and the other physical side effects of the concussion. "It's going to be okay, Vic. You've got me and Jasper and Felix and your aunt and the rest of your family. We know what you're really like, even if Phil apparently doesn't anymore. It's going to be okay."


	4. Chapter 4

John had undressed Victoria as she drifted in her drugged sleep, and threaded limp limbs into the sleeves of her nightgown before tucking the blankets and quilt on the bed firmly around her. Her injuries were getting better, he knew she was getting better. Most of the time she was like his old Vic, but seeing her like this, curled into a tight ball like an injured and frightened child….

"What happened?" Jasper called as he pushed the door open and came in. "Effie said there was some sort of problem." He frowned as he looked at Victoria. "Her head again? I thought the migraines were getting better."

"It was bad enough that she needed the shot." John said. "Did you see the people who came in?"

"I was in the kitchen. One of them devoured an entire plate of smores bars and over a dozen cookies. Who were they?"

"That's what I would like to know." Effie said as she came in with Felix following behind her. "They saw Tori. I had to make up some story about a ghost haunting the place to explain her away. They obviously knew who she was but the certainly didn't seem happy to see her. So who are they?"

"Phil's people according to Vic. Well, Phil's people and Trip, who was working with alien me."

"Phil Coulson?" Effie said with a frown. "Agent Coulson who hasn't done a thing for poor Victoria, who hasn't taken five minutes in the last two months to contact her family to try to find out what's going on?" She looked down at her sleeping niece, and then at John and Jasper. If they hadn't been there… She would never forget the morning they had shown up on her doorstep, all of them ragged and battered, poor Victoria so dizzy and weak from the injury to her head that they were carrying her. After what they had done, giving them a safe haven and taking in Felix as well after they retrieved him from the hospital was the least she could have done. "I shouldn't have given them all of those cookies."

"It was just the kids. It's not their fault that Phil's…." John shook his head, not sure what to say. Not contacting Vic's family after getting that condolence card back with the message on the back…. Phil had to know something was going on. The next logical step would be to contact her family again, to try to find out what had happened and where Victoria was. Her grandmother's message made it pretty obvious they knew she was alive, so contacting them again was the obvious thing to do. But two months and not a word from him. John still couldn't believe it. What was wrong with Phil, and with Melinda too? "What were his people doing here anyway?"

"Buying a straightjacket, size large. They said it was for their boss. I certainly think a straightjacket is fitting for him after what he's done." Effie said as she reached out and gently brushed a few strands of red back from Victoria's pale face. "How bad was her head?"

"Bad enough to need the shot." John said. "They were getting a straightjacket for Phil?"

"They said it was for their boss, and from what I've heard about Agent May, large would never fit her." Effie said.

"No, Melinda's small. So Phil's needing a straightjacket. I wish I could say I was surprised but with the mess he made of things with Vic…. Do you think they believed you when you said the place was haunted? I mean, do you think you convinced them they didn't really see Vic?" Just seeing them had triggered a migraine. They really didn't need them snooping around further.

"I hope so. They left anyway, and I called Doc and he spotted their van heading out of town." She paused, before speaking. "I know you were thinking about contacting Shield, to tell them what happened, and to see about finding that boy of yours."

"Grant, yeah." And at this point, Grant was the only reason he would even consider contacting Shield after how they had treated Vic. He couldn't believe that the boy he had rescued fifteen years ago could have done what Vic said he did, shooting her in cold blood, so the only thing he could figure was that Grant had been taken by the same aliens that had grabbed him and Jasper. "I'll find Grant. We don't need Phil for that." And when he found the kid…. Vic thought he, Jasper and Felix had been fussing over her, that was going to be nothing compared to what Grant would do. He would have her tucked up in bed and wrapped in cotton fluff for the next year probably, and would be hovering asking if he could bring her anything for her poor head or if she needed her pillows fluffed, and to rest and not to move between apologies for being kidnapped by the alien who hurt her. He couldn't wait to see that. And he was going to see that. He would find Grant and all of this was going to be okay. Find Grant and get Vic better.

"So we're not going to try to contact them, now that we're sure they're still out there?" Felix asked. He had some questions that he would like to ask Phil too, in addition to John's planned loud and angry questions about Victoria's abandonment. He was not pleased about being left in a hospital with no means of paying the bill or idea of what was going on. If John and Jasper hadn't shown up and collected him when they did, despite the rather unorthodox method of getting him out of the building via a laundry cart that he was sure John was to blame for, he would probably be in jail.

John shook his head. "If they could treat Vic like this…. We'll manage without them. We've managed for over two months without them. We don't need them now."


	5. Chapter 5

Shrieking. Someone was shrieking. John noticed that first, as he woke, and then a moment later blinked his eyes open, years of training bringing him fully awake almost instantly. Naked. He was naked. Naked and in the shattered remains of some sort of container. Glass was everywhere, along with some sort of gooey liquid that was covering his body as well as the floor.

Shoes. He saw a pair of shoes covered with purple ooze rushing past the container he was hidden beneath, and then there was something there. He didn't know what it was, but it was big and brown, and before he could think more about whether this was a good plan or the worst one in the world, he had reached out and grabbed for whatever the thing was's feet. He jerked back as a frightening face with a beak like some sort of mollusk hit the ground in front of him, and then there was a loud crash, and something slammed down, blocking his view all together.

"Hey, is there someone under there?" He heard a voice call a minute later.

"Jasper? Is that you?" That sounded like Jasper, but what was he doing here, wherever here was? About the only thing he knew was that he wasn't back at the Triskellion, awaiting Vic's arrival to yell at him for missing the budget meeting.

"John?" Jasper picked his way around the large piece of metal shelving he had managed to bring down on the alien who had been chasing him. Flat. It was flat, and it looked like its head was detached from his body. He hoped that meant it was dead. He grabbed hold of what looked like a metal and glass container that it sounded like the voice had came from beneath and pulled. John, he was right it was John and…. "You're naked. What are you doing here without clothes?"

"Nothing enjoyable, I can reassure you." John got to his feet and then blinked, thinking something was wrong with his eyes. "Why are you purple?"

"That thing was BASTING me! If the sauce wasn't slippery, I would be in an oven right now!" Was that a crate filled with clothes? Human sized clothes? Jasper was more than a little afraid of what that many human sized clothes in the lair of an alien that had just tried to prepare him for supper could mean, but he dug through the items anyway, and tossed a turtleneck and a pair of pants he thought might fit to John.

"If it's any comfort, you smell delicious." John said as he pulled on the pants.

"It isn't any comfort, thank you very much. What are you doing here?"

"I don't know." John's voice was muffled for a moment as he got the shirt on. "The last thing I remember was being in medical at the Triskellion waiting for Vic to come and tear me a new one for missing the budget meeting. You know, she said I was going to be in big trouble if I missed that meeting, but she didn't say anything about alien abductions. I might have tried a little harder to make it to the meeting if I knew an alien was going to grab me if I didn't show up." John picked his way through the glass and over to Jasper, sighing when he spotted a pair of boots that looked like they might fit. "How mad is she?" He had apparently been abducted by an alien. That had to mean he had been gone for awhile. Vic wasn't going to be happy.

"Budget meeting?" Jasper said with a puzzled look on his face. "Do you mean the budget meeting you missed because you fell down the stairs and broke your leg?"

"Yeah, because I took the stairs to delay getting to the meeting, and I wasn't watching where I was going because I was trying to text Grant to call me halfway through and claim an emergency so I could get out of there." And then something hit him. His leg didn't hurt, and he was moving fine. "Jasper, why…."

"John, the budget meeting was two years ago. You don't remember anything after that? What about New York?"

"New York?" John asked in confusion.

"The alien invasion of New York?"

"We had an alien invasion?" John said. "Well, an alien invasion besides this one? One alien still counts as in invasion, right?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe. You don't remember New York?"

"I remember the budget meeting, and falling down the stairs because I was trying to get a text to go through and missed that someone had been mopping. Two years?" John shook his head. "That was two years ago? And you people didn't notice I was gone for two years?"

"That's because you weren't gone. There was someone there who looked exactly like you. We need to get out of here and get in touch with Nick. I think that thing, whatever it is, might be some sort of shapeshifter."

"Shapeshifter?" But hadn't he read plenty of stories with things like that? He would think about it later. Two years? How could he have been gone two years? And if an alien had somehow taken his place…. "Vic! One of those things took my place, it didn't…." If anything happened to Vic, he would never forgive himself. And then there was Grant, but his boy was working more on his own now, and if that thing that had taken his place had his memories he would know how to deal with him. But Vic…

"She was okay, at least she was right before I went off to chase those bank robbers." Jasper said. At least without an alien hot on his heels, it was easier to find a door that would hopefully lead them out of there.

They were almost through the second room full of equipment that would have the scientists drooling for months when they heard footsteps that sent them dodging for cover. Neither of them had a weapon, but they armed themselves with the nearest and heaviest equipment that they could lift before ducking out of sight.

"I have another one for memory extraction and processing." The alien called as he came in, human tossed over a shoulder.

John's eyes went wide as he caught sight of the hair, falling and blocking the view of the face, but he knew that hair, dark with red streaks. The alien had his best friend in its claws and she wasn't moving, wasn't trying to fight back or…. He was moving before he had time to think and Jasper was as well. He wasn't sure how they did it, but the alien was on the ground within seconds, and apparently the thing Jasper had grabbed was some sort of alien version of a wielding torch, because the thing's head was on fire.

"Vic?" John dropped to the ground beside her. Still, she was much too still, and she hadn't made a sound even though the way she had fallen to the ground had to have hurt. "Vic?" He reached out and rolled her over onto her back as carefully as he could. Her eyes were closed and her skin was deathly white. "Vic?"

"Is that a bullet hole?" Jasper joined him on the ground at Victoria's side. It looked like a bullet hole in her blouse and there was blood all over the side of her head. "That looks like a bullet hole." If Victoria had been shot…. Where were they anyway? A gunshot wound, and was she breathing? It didn't look to him like she was breathing. "John?" If she wasn't breathing, or worse, if her heart had stopped, unless she got advanced help fast, she wouldn't have a chance and were they even somewhere where getting advanced help was a possibility?

"Vic? Baby girl?" Calm down. Calm down, he ordered himself but it was his best friend lying there, deathly still and cold. No, he shook his head and forced himself to focus. Pale, she was pale but her color wasn't that bad, wasn't like it would be if she was…. This was fixable. He could fix this. "Vic?" He reached out and tilted her head back with one hand on her forehead and raised her chin with the other. leaning over her and hoping to feel some sort of response. "Vic, it's okay. It's okay. Come on, baby girl, take a breath for me, okay? Vic?" He was almost ready to try mouth to mouth when his pleas were rewarded as she suddenly gasped for air.

"I'll see if I can find some blankets or something else we can use. Is she bleeding any?" Jasper asked. The blood on her head looked matted and clotted, one good thing if she wasn't still actively bleeding anyway.

"I don't know. Vic?" Her eyelashes were fluttering. "It's okay, baby girl. It's me and Jasper. You're safe. Open your eyes, okay?" He didn't dare move his hands from how they were positioned, keeping her airway open, until she was awake, but that bullet hole in her blouse, he didn't see any blood, but from the position, if it had penetrated, he didn't want to think of the potential bleeding internally that she could have going on. "Vic?"

Then her eyes were open and full of a terror he had never seen before and she was moaning and trying to pull away from his hands and….

Moaning. Not… John's eyes snapped open and he realized he had been dreaming, but the moaning was very real. "Vic?"

Jasper sat up on the other side of the bed and flipped on the bedside light, adjusting it so it wasn't shining directly at the bed where they had been sleeping, Victoria snuggled between the two of them, Felix in the other bed on the opposite side of the room.

"Sick. Going to be sick." Victoria whimpered, keeping her eyes tightly shut to block out the light and to try to hold back the tears that were fighting to fall.

"I'll get the shot." Felix called as Jasper grabbed for the nearby basin just in time. If her head was bad enough for Victoria to start throwing up, and thankfully she hadn't been that bad since his rescue from the hospital and joining their little group, there was no way that she was going to be able to swallow any medicine.

"Sorry." She whispered as she felt the sting of the needle in her thigh. "So sorry."

"Hey, it's not your fault." Jasper reassured her. "The doctor said it might take awhile for your head to be completely better. It's okay."

"Why did they do it?" Victoria murmured as she felt the drug starting to take effect and pull her into blissful, pain free unconsciousness. "Just sent a condolence card instead of looking for me. Didn't come even though grandma sent the card back saying I wasn't dead. Probably were happier thinking I was dead." And then the tears were flowing down her cheeks even as she drifted off to sleep.

"I don't know what Phil could be thinking." Felix shook his head as Jasper went to empty the basin in the small bathroom and John got Victoria tucked under the covers.

"I don't know either, but I do know that this better be the last we see of him and his people. Vic doesn't need to go through anything else thanks to them." John said as he gently stroked her forehead. "She's suffered enough."


	6. Chapter 6

Jemma jolted awake in her seat in the back of the van, her heart pounding, shaking at what she had seen in her dream, Agent Hand in front of her, blood dripping from her head, her chest, her stomach, not saying anything, just staring, the look on her face saying more than words ever could what their team had done to her, how they had failed to show even basic human decency towards the lost senior agent.

"Jemma, are you okay?" Skye asked as she turned around in the front seat to look at her. "We're almost home."

"Bad dream." Jemma murmured. "Really bad dream. Agent Hand was there."

"You know, I've been thinking about it." Fitz looked over at Jemma with concern. She was really rattled by what had happened back at the shop. He hoped what he had realized would make her feel better. "I don't think it was Agent Hand I saw at all."

"Fitz!" Now he was changing his mind and making her the only one who was claiming to have seen a ghost? "You said she mentioned Coulson! How would anyone but Agent Hand know about Coulson?"

"I've been thinking about it, and the more I think about it, I'm sure that wasn't what I heard." Fitz said. "I was munching on the smores bars, you see, and they were really crunchy. I had just taken a bite when that woman who I am sure was not Agent Hand's ghost or any ghost popped up and yelled at me. The crunch must have scrambled what I heard her say is all. She was yelling about my eating. I think what she really said was that I wasn't supposed to be eating in there. That makes more sense."

"But I saw her! I know I saw her! It was Agent Hand!" Jemma insisted.

"The woman I saw didn't even look that much like Agent Hand." Fitz said. "Dark hair and she had those streaks, but Ms. LaRue did too, remember?"

"That's right. She did." Trip said. "And she said that her niece was working there. Remember that, Jemma? I'll bet the niece has those streaks too, and that's who you saw. Not some ghost."

"Red streaks. What did she look like besides the red streaks?" Skye asked.

"Tall. She was tall like Agent Hand." Jemma said.

"But you bumped into her, right?" Fitz said.

Jemma nodded. "We both fell down."

"So you were both on the ground. Could you have been wrong about her height, maybe?" Skye said.

Jemma furrowed her brow as she thought about it. She could have sworn that the woman had been tall but…. "Well, she was taller than me." But then so many people were, including plenty of women who weren't Agent Hand. "Fitz, you didn't think she was tall?"

"I was kneeling down when she popped up, but I would say average height." Fitz said. "And the clothes she was wearing, some sort of loose purple skirt that came all the way to the floor and a purple sweater? Does that sound like Agent Hand to you?"

"Was that what she had on when you saw her?" Trip asked.

"Yes. That's it." Jemma said.

"Don't ghosts normally appear in what they died in? Or at least in the clothes they wore the most when they were alive? Isn't that what the movies say?" Skye said. "So if this was really Agent Hand's ghost, wouldn't she have been in a black suit, not some sort of flowing purple outfit?"

"So you don't think it was her?" Jemma felt a bit of hope for the first time.

"I think it must have been Ms. LaRue's niece. That makes a whole lot more sense than it being Agent Hand's ghost. Why would her ghost pop up after two months anyway? We haven't done anything lately to bring her ghost down on us. Don't you have to do something to trigger a haunting if the ghost doesn't show up right away? Again, that's what the movies say."

"Maybe you're right." Jemma said after a moment. And she would feel so much better without the thought of Agent Hand haunting them to torment her. She sighed as the pulled into the Playground. "I'm sure you're right. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You were tired, is all." Fitz said. "You probably ought to head right to bed. Do you need a snack to take with you?" He passed her one of the packs of edible underwear with a smile. "Take it. I have plenty!"

"Thank you Fitz." Jemma said as she got out of the van and headed for the door that would lead to her bed and the rest she obviously needed badly. "Goodnight, Agent May!" she called as she passed the woman.

"Did something happen?" Melinda asked as she looked after Jemma with a frown.

"Nothing that a good night's sleep won't fix." Skye wasn't going to tell Melinda about the supposed sighting of Agent Hand's ghost. It would only remind her of what Ward had done in murdering the senior agent and make her feel bad once again. "She'll be fine. And we found the straightjacket for AC. They had a bunch of colors but we went with blue. He ought to like blue, right?"


	7. Chapter 7

Victoria opened her eyes and John was there, hands on her face, holding her down. She moaned and tried weakly to pull away from him even though she knew she wouldn't have the strength to succeed. Pain washed over her at the movement and her head swam, nausea hitting her as she started to gag.

"Vic, it's okay. Here, let me…." John reached out and rolled her onto her side seconds before she started to throw up. He gently pulled her hair back out of the way as best he could. Her hair was going to need washing, but she didn't need anything else in it, on top of the blood. "It's okay. You're okay. You've probably got a pretty good concussion, but you're going to be okay, baby girl."

Spasms washed over her stomach and then aching pain as she threw up what felt like everything she had ate for the last week. She had closed her eyes as the nausea hit hoping to fight it off but she made herself open them again and she suddenly choked as she tried to scream at the sight of what was in front of her, some sort of hulking brownish skinned creature, face burnt but obviously not human. Alien? Hydra was involved with aliens?

"Vic, I'm sorry! Hey, it's okay. I'm an idiot." John quickly got her on her other side facing away from the dead alien. "I'm an idiot. You've said I was before and here you have proof of it." He reached out and started to gently rub her back, hoping to chase some of the fear he saw in her eyes away.

"She's definitely got a concussion." Jasper said as she came back in and saw Victoria still gagging and throwing up. He dropped down beside her and held out the sheets he had found. "These should work, right? What else do you need me to do?"

"Can you hold onto her and keep her from moving too much while I check her?" John said. Letting her move before they found out if she might be bleeding internally, not a good idea. From the way she was lying in her left side, at least he had a good view of the head wound, a nasty looking gash behind her ear that he could tell was the result of a gunshot that had grazed her and taken out a long and narrow bit of skin. Gunshot, even a graze, to the head wasn't good, but internal bleeding could be even worse if it was going on. He needed to check for that first. "Vic, Jasper's going to hold you while I check and see how bad you're hurt. Just hold still for a few minutes, okay?"

Jasper. Wasn't Jasper dead? Truck. He had been hit by a truck. Hydra had been able to fake that? What else had they been able to fake then? Were all of Shield's few victories illusion? Was the fact she had been able to hold the Hub an illusion, something Hydra had just wanted her to believe until they could show her otherwise? Tears pricked her eyes but she fought them back. Hydra had her, she was too sick to fight and she knew that it was only a matter of time until the torture began but she would not let them have her tears. She would not give them that victory over her.

"Kevlar. She has kevlar underneath her clothes." John sighed as he realized Victoria had been wearing some sort of protection that had kept the bullet from penetrating but after a moment he realized that penetration or not, they could still have problems. A bullet hitting kevlar could break bone, or the force of the impact alone… Hopefully the thing had velcro holding it in place. That would make it easier to get off to make sure there wasn't damage beneath without having to move her too much.

Hands. Victoria felt hands tugging at her blouse and opening it. Were they going to…. She wasn't John's type. She…. But had that been a lie? Everything? Was it all a Hydra lie? She felt the last tiny sliver of hope that she had fade away and she blinked back tears once more, forcing the grief at the loss of her friend, of people she trusted away, anger hitting her as she suddenly felt cool air on her chest and hands running along her sides.

Ribs felt okay. That was one good thing, but there was bruising on her belly that he didn't like at all. "Vic, this might hurt but I've got to make sure you're not hurt too bad before we get out of here, okay?"

Pain stabbed through her and she was suddenly throwing up again. Torture. Torture instead of…. "I won't betray Shield." She somehow forced the words out between painful heaves. "I won't help Hydra. You'll have to kill me."

"Hydra?" John said as he and Jasper looked at each other in confusion. "Isn't that the thing with Captain America from the 40s that Phil's always going on about?"

Jasper nodded. He probably needed to tell John about Phil's death, but right now with Victoria sick and obviously confused, they had bigger things to worry about. "Hey, it's okay." He said as he rubbed her back to try to soothe her. "I think you've been having a bad dream. I know Phil's Captain America stories make it seem like it was only yesterday but Hydra's been gone for almost seventy years, remember?" Hydra? She definitely had a serious concussion.

"You're Hydra. Both of you. Traitors." Pain and nausea washed over her as she spoke, and she started to shiver. "I won't help you. I won't betray Shield."

"Vic?" What was she talking about? The relief he felt when he hadn't found any rigidity in her abdomen was suddenly replaced by worry about the head injury. The bullet hadn't penetrated but could it have caused bleeding or swelling anyway? "Did you see any sort of radio or communications hook-up? We need to get through to Nick and get help out here."

"No Nick. No Shield. It's gone. It's all gone." Victoria didn't have anything left to throw up, but she gagged painful dry heaves anyway as the shivers continued to wrack her body and a icy detached feeling washed over her.

"Nothing communications I would have a clue how to work. I'll go see if I can figure out how they brought her in here. Hopefully there's a vehicle we can use and a road or at least a trail out of here." Jasper said as he handed over the one other thing he had found that might be helpful, a collection of wallets. "There's some cash there anyway. We might be able to use it."

"Good idea. It's going to be okay, Vic." John tucked the sheets around Victoria before quickly clearing the wallets, A couple thousand. That would at least be enough to get a room until they could contact Nick, if Vic didn't end up needing a hospital bed, that was.

Dizzy. She felt dizzy and cold on top of the nausea and stabbing pain in her head and stomach, and there was something wrong with her eyes. Jasper had looked purple when he had hurried away. Even though she she didn't want to give Hydra the satisfaction of her tears, Victoria felt one slipping down her cheek anyway. "Thought you were my friend." She whispered. "A lie? All a lie."

"A… Vic?" John felt tears sting his eyes at her words. "Vic, listen, it's a long story even for me, but if I did something over the last couple of years that made you think for an instant that you aren't my best friend in the world, could I beg you to give me the benefit of the doubt until we can get you patched up and I can explain? It's going to be okay, Vic. I promise it's going to be okay, baby girl." What had that alien done that had made Vic think that he wasn't her friend? This was worse than what he had expected, her yelling at him for missing the budget meeting.

"Won't betray Shield. You won't break me." she whispered. She was cold but part of her welcomed it. Shock, she was slipping into shock and she felt sure she had internal bleeding going on either in her stomach from the impact of the bullet with the kevlar or in her brain. Hopefully in her brain. At least that would guarantee her a coma or death before John could break her and get Shield intelligence out of her. "My best friend. I thought you were my best friend. You would know how if anyone would. You won't get anything. I'm dying. You won't get anything. Dying. I win."

Dying? Vic thought she was…. "Jasper!" John shouted for him before turning his focus onto Victoria once more. Her belly was soft, not rigid, although she tensed when he touched her. Wouldn't her belly be rigid if there was internal bleeding? That left the head injury. Head injury. If she was bleeding into her brain or there was swelling…. How far were they from help? Head injury, bleeding or swelling, every moment would count. "Vic? It's going to be okay. I promise it's going to be okay, baby girl." He leaned over her, looking for any signs of what might be wrong. No raccoon eyes or bruising around her ears that might indicate a skull fracture although the blood made it hard to tell anything about the skin behind her right ear. No fluid draining from the ears or the nose. Her eyes were half closed but when he pushed the eyelids back her pupils reacted and seemed equal. Those were good signs, weren't they? But…

"Twenty years. Thought you were my friend." Victoria whispered. "Promise me something. Even though it was a lie, promise. Send me back to my family. Let them know what happened to me. Don't put my grandma and grandpa and my mother through not knowing."

"Vic, it's going to be okay. We're going to get you help and then you can call your family, okay? Jasper!"

"No sign of a vehicle. I'm guessing they used a plane to bring people in. We're in the middle of nowhere, but there might be something, I'm guessing fifteen or twenty miles out." Jasper said as he came in. Fifteen or twenty miles. Not good.

"Okay." Fifteen or twenty miles. That was doable although he was glad that Vic had always been thin for her height. "You can carry the money." He indicated to Jasper as he tucked the sheets securely around Victoria before picking her up as carefully as possible, settling her head against his shoulder. "Okay, baby girl, let's get you some help. Remember what happened with that IED in Sarejevo, Vic? You kept me talking and moving for hours until I could get to a place where a med evac could get in without killing everyone. You saved my life that time. Looks like it's time to return the favor."

 

"Vic?" John reached out and gently stroked her cheek as she whimpered and then her eyelashes fluttered.

There was panic in her eyes as she woke for a few seconds until she realized where she was. Safe. Safe in the carriage house at her aunt's, not back there in that alien base in the middle of nowhere where she had expected to die. And then the pain in her head hit and she slammed her eyes closed, moaning as she rolled onto her side and fought the urge to throw up.

"Vic? Do you think you can swallow the pills and keep them down or do you need another one of the shots?" John asked. Two of the shots in under twenty-four hours. If Vic needed a third, he was afraid they were going to have to get the doctor in to see her again.

"Pills. Let's try the pills." Victoria murmured, recalling the doctor's cautioning about the injections.

"Okay. Jasper went to make us some breakfast, and Felix is helping your aunt with some orders from her website." John got water and the bottle of pills, and helped her sit up a bit so she could swallow them. "Pills, breakfast and then bed. How does that sound?"

"I need to work." Victoria murmured. Work. She had gone from being one of the highest level agents overseeing hundreds of operations to a housekeeper. How the mighty had fallen. Only able to manage dusting the high shelves for her aunt, and then only half of the time due to the crippling headaches But it was something. At least she was still able to do something, even if it was only helping short people with cleaning high places.

"Effie was wondering if you could look at some of the figures for the website orders." Felix said as he came in with Jasper right behind him with a tray loaded down with their breakfast. "She thinks the internet server might be messing up the order charges again."

Looking at numbers. She could do that, maybe if her head would cooperate so that one number didn't run into the others. "Do you have them with you?" She asked.

"I'll bring them later once I've printed them off." Felix told her.

"You probably have time for a nap." Jasper added as he passed out the bowls of oatmeal. John set his bowl on the bedside table and settled in, Victoria's head settled in his lap, so he could spoonfeed her.

"Hate this." Victoria could feel the effects of the pills starting to pull her back under, and she couldn't help but let a tear fall. Needing to be fed, needing to be tucked into bed for naps. She hated feeling so helpless.

"Hey, you're getting better." Jasper told her. "Remember, the doctor said three to six months was going to be the most likely recovery time. It's barely been two months and you've been doing a lot better."

"Until I saw Coulson's people." Victoria muttered as another tear dripped down. "Blames me for not having an extraction plan for his people. He ought to be blaming himself for not reading the mission plans. And I had a plan to get them out. An unwritten plan. Did he really think I would sacrifice two people over something like that? He blames me, though. They all blame me. They probably had a party when they figured out I was supposed to be dead."

"Maybe I didn't tell Phil the Sarejevo story enough?" John speculated as he finished feeding Victoria and got her tucked back in. "I must not have told him the story enough or he would have known better. It's going to be okay, Vic. They're gone now, and they're not coming back. You're going to be okay."


	8. Chapter 8

"Jemma, are you okay?" Skye asked as Jemma came in join the group which thank heavens didn't include Coulson or May the next morning. "Didn't you sleep at all?"

Jemma shook her head as she accepted the cup of tea that Fitz held out to her. The way she was feeling at the moment, she didn't think it was safe to risk food. "I keep dreaming about Agent Hand. I know, I know, it wasn't really her ghost that we saw." She said before Fitz could try to comfort her with his explanation for why they hadn't really had an encounter with the senior agent's ghost. "But it did look like her at first glance and I suppose…." She shook her head, trying to figure out how to explain things. "Fitz, you remember at the Academy and the Wall of Valor and how they handled adding a new agent to the wall, right?"

Fitz nodded, and when he saw the confused look on Skye's face, he explained. "They always tried to do some sort of special recognition when they added someone to the wall. Trip, did they do anything like that at operations?"

"Adding someone to the Wall, that was a big deal," Trip agreed. "Maybe it was because so many people that were up there were operations, but we always tried to do some sort of ceremony or a mini-memorial or something."

"And Agent Hand didn't get anything." Jemma whispered, tears stinging her eyes. "Even though she was one of the only high ranking agents left, even after how she managed to hold the HUB for Shield. She didn't get anything."

"Maybe her family did something?" Fitz suggested. 

"Let me look." Skye pulled out her laptop, her brow furrowing for a moment as she tried to recall the names from the sympathy card that Coulson had sent to Victoria's family. A sympathy card, even though Coulson had nearly driven himself nuts trying to find the most appropriate card and come up with the message, hearing what Shield usually did when they lost a agent, it seemed like so little. Searching Victoria Hand was only bringing up a ton of stuff about some project in Australia to provide artificial hands. Maybe if she searched on her family…. She finally recalled the names and typed them in. "Nothing about a funeral or a memorial."

"They might not have been able to have one, since Agent Hand's body was never found, and with Shield not official at the moment to get a death certificate issued without a body." Trip said.

"You would think that creep Talbot or Maria Hill could do something, though, wouldn't you. to at least make sure the families got closure?" Skye muttered as she clicked a link. Facebook. Would a a death be on Facebook? Pictures. The page was full of pictures, it looked like some sort of party, and she almost clicked out of the site before noticing a familiar figure in the background.

"Skye, did you find something?" Jemma asked when she noticed the expression on the young hacker's face.

"Yeah." Skye turned the laptop so the others could see. "Someone made a page on Facebook. It's for Agent Hand's grandmother's 98th birthday party last year. See? There she is in the background."

"She looks happy." Jemma whispered as she leaned down and looked at the picture, a group gathered around the birthday grandmother. Agent Hand was in the back so you couldn't see her terribly well, but there was no way that it could be anyone else.

"Her family looks like they're nice." Fitz added.

"I mean, I knew she had a family." Skye said. "AC drove himself nuts trying to find a card to send to her family. She had to have a family. Not like she could spring from under a rock, although I still swear that's where my fifth grade principal had to come from." But knowing Agent Hand had a family and actually seeing her family were two different things.

Jemma raised her head, and for a moment she thought she saw something, Agent Hand standing there, blood dripping, an accusing expression on her face, only when Jemma blinked, she was gone.

"Jemma?" Skye said as she looked at her with sudden worry. "Are you okay? What were you looking at?"

"Nothing." Nothing, surely what she had thought she had seen was nothing. She couldn't have seen an actual ghost. Please, she couldn't have seen a ghost! "Isn't there something we could do, something for Agent Hand? I know there isn't much chance of finding her body but…."

"I could do some searches." Skye said. Obviously this thing with Agent Hand was really bothering Jemma, and actually seeing Agent Hand's family, and seeing her happy, it was starting to hit home to her too. "There are places online where they try to identify bodies that are, well, unidentified. I could take a look there and see if I could find something."

"And, you know, I've been thinking about the Wall." Trip said. "We lost a lot of good people to Hydra. It might be time for us to look into starting something like that again. It wouldn't be like what the Academies and Shield did before, but it would be something, you know, a way to let the people we lost not end up forgotten."

"That would be good, but maybe we shouldn't let Coulson and May know about it right now. They're dealing with enough." Skye said.

"Jemma? Maybe you might want to go back to bed for awhile?" Fitz suggested. "Before one of them sees you and wants to know what's wrong?"

Jemma would have argued, but with the way she felt and the fact that she was the world's worst liar, getting some sleep was probably for the best. "I think I'll try that." She said with a nod as she stood and started down the hallway to her room. There was a figure she could see out of the corner of her eye as she slowly walked down the hall, keeping pace with her, blood dripping off of red streaked hair. Jemma slammed her eyes closed, hoping she could find her room by feel. She couldn't be seeing this! She couldn't be seeing Agent Hand's ghost! Please don't let her be seeing Agent Hand's ghost!


	9. Chapter 9

Despite John, Jasper and Felix and then her Aunt Effie when she drug herself into the store, Victoria was determined to work. Her head hurt, although not nearly as bad as it had the day before when the team that she refused to think of showed up, and she wasn't sure how well she had done on looking at the numbers from the website, but still she could do something. She needed to be doing something and making some attempt at getting a semblance of a life back. If nothing else, she could make sure everything in the store was in one piece, since John had volunteered to take over dusting for her.

"I know how to dust, you know." John said with a frown as he came down one of the narrow hallways to find Victoria frowning and studying the work he had done.

"I've seen your house. I beg to differ." Victoria said.

"Okay, I might get distracted when I'm home and a few things slip through the cracks, but I've seen people dust. I know how it's supposed to be done. Do you want me to do it over while you watch and criticize?" At least that would be better than Vic attempting to reclaim the feather duster and polish in an attempt to do the dusting herself. With how pale she was looking, and like she was barely resisting the urge to throw up, he really wanted to get her back to bed, but it looked like he would maybe have to settle for getting her to supervise him and point out how he was doing the job wrong.

Before Victoria could reply they heard the door open and the delivery person called out, Packages for you, Miss Effie. Looks like some big ones."

"Thank you, Eddie." She said as she signed the form. "My sister said she was sending these."

"You have a good day now, and tell Miss Winnie hello when you talk to her. Hope she's back home soon." The young deliveryman said as he left, giving a cheerful wave as the door closed.

"What is it?" Victoria asked as she came in with John following her, and Jasper and Felix poked their heads out of the kitchen.

"That horrible Talbot person finally let your mother and your grandmother gather up your things." Effie said. "They moved most of it to storage, but there were a few things that they thought you might want."

Her things. Victoria stared at the boxes, paralyzed, thinking of the items that she knew would be inside, not sure that she was ready, even after two months, to look through them. But she knew she had to, and hopefully before the others and her aunt gave her anymore looks like she might collapse at any second. She reached out and opened the first box. Clothes. Clothes were good. Not that she really had a need for a bunch of black suits, but clothes were a safe place to start.

"Is that my jacket?" John asked as he spotted a familiar black article under a carefully folded stack of suit jackets.

"The one you left at my place because you were too drunk and it was too bloodstained for you to figure out how to get it on? Yes." Victoria said as she picked the article of clothing in question out of the pile. "Do you know how much you owe me for the dry cleaning?" Although thinking about things now, John had left her to deal with his damaged clothing only a few days before he managed to get himself abducted by aliens. Should she hold him responsible for his alien abductor failing to reclaim his property? She thought she would anyway.

"I'll pay. I'll pay. If we ever actually are able to earn money so I can pay you. It's a jacket without alien germs all over it. I'll definitely pay for getting it back." John told her. What he wouldn't have given to have had this jacket a few months ago when they were escaping that alien base in the middle of nowhere.

"Talbot didn't decide to do a little shopping from his wife in there, did he?" Jasper asked as Victoria unearthed her jewelry box from beneath the clothing and opened it. "I wouldn't put it past him."

Working with Shield, Victoria didn't have as many chances as she might have liked to wear nice jewelry, but she did have good pieces, and the thought of Talbot treating her things like the Home Shopping Network had her quickly sorting through the box to make sure nothing was missing. Rings, necklaces, a pin that was of more sentimental than monetary value. Then her fingers brushed against something, a thin chain holding a ring and a tiny charm, something she had put away months before things collapsed when pain and heartache made them to painful for her to face everyday. She couldn't help it. She gave a little gasp of shock, the box slipping from her fingers and spilling all over the floor as the pain in her head came rushing back.

"Vic?" John reached out to try to steady her but she shrugged off his hand.

"You might have been right about my needing to rest. "I think I'm going to go and lay down for awhile. Can one of you bring the boxes out to the carriage house? I can sort through them later." And then she was out the door before the tears could start to fall, the chain still clutched in shaking fingers.

"Go. Take care of her." Effie ordered the three men. "I'll clean this up."

"Vic? They had decided without saying a word that it was better for one of them to go in to check on her alone. "Vic?" John called her name again as he came as quietly as he could into the bedroom. In the few minutes that it had taken them to follow her, Victoria had apparently taken her medication from the pill bottle and the glass on the bedside table, and was curled on the bed, still dressed, silent sobs shaking her.

"Vic?" John started to ask what was wrong, but he caught sight of the chain and the ring, and knew. "Isabelle?"

Victoria nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Baby girl, I'm so sorry." John wasn't sure how Victoria would take it, but he gathered her into a tight hug anyway, wishing there was something that he could say, but thanks to the alien who had grabbed him, he had barely had a chance to meet Victoria's late girlfriend. Before he could try to think of something to say anyway, he got a closer look at the chain and noticed the charm. Was that a baby…. His eyes went wide with horror. "Vic, were…."

"We tried for over a year. When Izzy's sister got sick again she was so sad and worried, and I just wanted to make her happy." Victoria whispered as she fingered the tiny baby carriage. "She gave it to me the day after I said I wanted to try. But nothing we tried worked. And now Izzy's gone and this is all I have left of her." And it was probably the medication hitting her full force but Victoria felt the tears somehow coming harder as two more pairs of arms wrapped around her, Jasper and Felix cuddling her up as well as she sobbed. And then the others were sobbing as well, all of them mourning the things they lost, and clinging desperately together, holding on to the only things they had left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to mention that a character has fears that she might be about to be raped in this chapter. There's absolutely no real threat or danger of rape, but I thought I better let people know that there is something with someone being pretty terrified that's going to happen, even if there isn't an actual danger of it happening.

"Why is it always in the middle of nowhere?" John grumbled as he followed behind Jasper, who was holding bushes and tree limbs back and trying to clear the path as much as possible to make it easier for John to carry Victoria without risking unnecessary jolts. "Why no matter what evil group it is, why do they always put their evil headquarters in the middle of nowhere? Don't evil people ever want to call out and order a pizza? Why can't they put their evil headquarters in New York or Chicago or Las Vegas or something for a change of pace? Some place with a working EMS system around the corner, anyway." He said the last with worry as he looked down at Victoria. Her eyes had slipped closed again. "Vic?" He called her name, worry in his voice. "Open your eyes for me, okay? No going to sleep on us."

"Here." Jasper stopped and scanned the area before spotting a place under an overhang of evergreen trees that looked relatively protected. He shoved a couple of branches aside to let John get Victoria under cover, and the followed himself, dropped to the ground next to them. The light was rapidly fading and filtered through the branches, but he could see enough to tell that he didn't like the way Victoria was looking at all. She was pale, her breathing slow and shallow, her eyes somehow still closed even through John chattering enough to raise the dead. "John, she doesn't look good."

"Yeah, I know." John said. "Vic? Come on, open your eyes. Vic? Baby Girl, Nick's going to take hearing about this worse than he took that mess in Tijuana. Do you want to go into a coma or something and miss it?" He reached out and as carefully as he could pushed an eyelid back to try to check her response even though he wasn't sure how well he would be able to see in the dim light under the tree. If that bullet had done damage even though it hadn't penetrated her skull…. But before he could start to panic, there was a light moan and Victoria's eyelids twitched before the other eye slipped open.

She hadn't wanted to moan, had tried her hardest to keep from showing any weakness, but she hadn't been able to hold it back, and now she had failed at keeping her eyes closed, at doing everything in her power to drift off into the safety of a coma and death. Victoria cursed herself for her failure, even as confusion washed over her as to where she was. What did John and Jasper hope to gain with this, walking through the woods instead of just starting the torture and interrogation back at the base? She could only assume it was part of some plan to wear her down. Not that it would take much. She moaned again despite trying to fight it as nausea washed over her and she gagged, painful dry heaves sending agony shooting through her stomach. A coma. Why couldn't she just slip into a coma or die already?

"Vic…." John didn't know what to do, besides holding her tight, hoping it would somehow comfort her. He had never felt this helpless in his life, not even in Sarejevo. In the middle of nowhere with no way to get Victoria proper medical attention, no way to get her water which would at least stop the pain of the dry heaves because there was no way to be sure it was safe, no way to even keep her warm. The sheets Jasper had found weren't much protection, and even though he had tried to keep her cradled as close as he could to share a bit of body heat, John could feel that her skin was icy cold.

"Here." Jasper wrapped his arms around Victoria as well, and snuggled close to her other side. He shivered as he came into contact with her icy skin, and looked at John with real worry. That cold, and Victoria wasn't shivering at all. This wasn't good.

"I wish I had my jacket." John said. No shivering, this definitely wasn't good.

"I'd offer mine but it's covered in alien basting sauce." Jasper said as he looked down at his clothes with a frown. "What sort of aliens don't peel their food before basting?"

"Maybe they needed fiber?" John speculated. They needed to get moving again. Victoria was definitely in shock and slipping into worse hypothermia by the minute. She needed a hospital, or at least a warm hotel room and a comfortable bed. Before they got started again, though, he knew he better check her belly to make sure at least that wasn't getting worse or showing signs of potential internal bleeding.

Every fiber of her body tensed as John opened up her blouse again, and unfastened the kevlar, his hands running up her body. Now, this was going to happen now, out in the woods, under a tree? Victoria wanted to scream, wanted to fight, or at least show some sort of resistance but she didn't have the strength. All she could do was to force her eyes closed and pray that it would be over quickly, or if not that it would somehow worsen the head injury and allow her to slip into a coma before she could feel much.

"Vic?" Her belly was still soft, and he had been as gentle as he could when he checked her, but from the expression on her face, and the tear slipping from closed eyes, he obviously had caused her pain anyway. "Baby Girl, I'm so sorry. We're going to get you some help, alright?" He told her as he got the kevlar back into place and fastened her blouse back up before motioning for Jasper that they needed to get going. "Just a little bit longer and we'll get some help. You just stay awake for me, alright? Nick is really going to have my head when he hears about this. Tijuana, this is definitely going to top what he did when he heard about Tijuana. You don't want to fall asleep and miss what he's going to do to me when I have to call and tell him about this mess, do you? Come on, Baby Girl, keep your eyes open, okay?"

"No Nick. Nick's dead." Victoria whispered.

John and Jasper exchanged a look of confusion. They had been gone awhile. At least John knew that he had been. Had something actually happened to Nick?

"He puts up with Tony Stark." Jasper said, shaking his head and forcing away the thought that something might have happened. "If anything was going to kill him, dealing with Stark would. He's fine." Unless maybe Stark had managed to do something big that had given Nick a heart attack? No, he forced that thought away. Nick was fine. What did it say about how severe Victoria's head injury was that she was imagining Nick was dead, though?

John nodded. "Nick's fine, Baby Girl. You've been having some really bad dreams. He's fine and he's going to rip me a couple of new ones when he finds out about this. Nick's fine. Hey, has he had to come to you for help with his taxes yet? Did he get his tax forms in Sanskrit or hieroglyphics this year?" Taxes, that reminded him…. "I really hope that alien remembered to do my taxes." The last thing he needed was to have been abducted by an alien, forced to carry his injured best friend for miles to help, faced with whatever Nick was going to do when he got the call about this, without having the IRS waiting with an audit when he got home. He was pretty sure a return of his had made an entire office of them cry once and they tended to hold that kind of thing against you.

"He did a really good job of imitating you." Jasper said. "If he did your taxes, I think you might be in worse trouble than if he forgot them."

"Baby Girl, please tell me that nasty alien at least thought to ask you questions about my taxes at eleven at night on April 15th, or I think I might be going to prison." John said with a groan. "Would you like that, to see me drug off to prison? I probably deserve it, I know. Vic, just keep your eyes open for me, okay? Stay awake!"

Taxes. John babbling about his taxes. Something about that felt…. No, don't think. She couldn't afford to let herself think. She knew the position that she was in. Hydra had her, and thanks to that traitor Ward, she knew rescue wasn't coming. Weak from blood loss and in pain from the head injury, she wouldn't stand a chance when it came to being interrogated and the information she had was too valuable to risk letting it fall into Hydra's hands. As much as part of her brain screamed at her to fight, to try to hold on, she knew that death was her only viable option. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself to drift off.

"Vic?" They hadn't even gone a hundred yards from where they had been resting under the tree and she was already trying to fall asleep again? This wasn't good. "Vic, come on! Keep your eyes open for me, Baby Girl. You're going to get worse if you go to sleep right now. You know that. Open your eyes for me, okay? Vic?" There had to be something, some way to keep her awake. If she did fall asleep he was terrified that she wouldn't wake up again. But what… He suddenly had an idea. "A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall! Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer…."

"Are you trying to make me wish I had been stuffed in that oven?" Jasper grumbled. But Victoria let out a whimper and her eyelashes fluttered in response to the noise. If John singing worked, and kept her awake…. "Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall." He joined in with the singing, and Victoria whimpered again. This might actually work.

 

It was dark and growing colder when they finally spotted the lights.

"I have never been so glad to see a Walmart in my life." John sighed with relief when he spotted the store's bright blue sign.

"So do we call an ambulance or…."

"I don't know." John said with a frown as he settled onto the ground, sheltered by trees and shrubs on the outskirts of the parking lot, Jasper beside him leaning against Victoria's other side while they tried to figure out what to do. They had been able to keep Victoria awake and it didn't seem like she was getting any worse, even though she was still rambling about Hydra. Hydra, what had Phil been doing that had somehow got his poor baby girl so fixated on Hydra in her concussed state? Did he finally convince Fury to okay that massive Captain America roleplaying game he had came up with in the Academy as a training exercise? "Let me go in and see about getting a phone, so we can get hold of Nick and consult with medical to see what they say. Maybe there's a team somewhere close by that can pick us up pretty fast. Probably better to get her to a Shield facility if we can at all, with her head messed up the way it is. She would kill both of us, or at least me, if we took her to a civilian hospital and she let something classified slip if we could avoid it. Vic, I'm going to go and get a phone so we can let Nick know what happened, okay? You just stay with Jasper and stay awake for just a little bit longer. Think up ways for Nick to punish me for missing that budget meeting. That ought to be fun for you. I'll be right back. Jasper, whatever you do…"

"Don't let her go to sleep. I know." And keeping Victoria awake, that meant singing that terrible, terrible song. "Get a few bottles of water along with that phone. After three hours I need something."

"Water, phone. Be right back."

Jasper was seriously questioning if John knew the meaning of being right back by the time he hit five bottles of beer on the wall for the third time. A song of a hundred verses and he had sang it almost three times through? How long could it possibly take to grab a burner phone and a couple of bottles of water?

"Jasper?' John called.

"Finally! What took so long?" Jasper said as John came into view, loaded down with bags and dropped down beside them. "You got more than a phone. You were just supposed to get a phone and water."

"Jasper…." John's voice was shaky, like he had just been hit in the gut, which was pretty much how he felt. "Jas…."

"What's wrong?" Jasper asked. "Did you go ahead and call Fury?" But the way John sounded, like something much worse than being chewed out by the Director had happened, Jasper was a little afraid, he had to admit, to find out what put that tone in his voice.

"I…" How could he tell them? John didn't know how to tell them. Well, how to tell Jasper, anyway. Vic obviously already knew. Vic…. "Baby Girl, I'm so sorry." He whispered as he wrapped his arms around her and gently hugged her, pressing a soft kiss into her hair. "Vic, I'm so sorry."

"John? What's going on?" Jasper demanded. Did it sound like John was fighting to hold back tears? This wasn't good.

"There was a newspaper." John finally made himself speak. "Shield…. Shield's gone."

"What?" Jasper's eyes went wide and he almost asked if this was a joke before catching a look at John in the dim light filtering through the bushes from cars in the parking lot. Tears were running down his cheeks. "What happened?"

"Hydra. The Hydra thing that Vic kept talking about? It's real." John said.

"What?" Hydra, that definitely wasn't what Jasper was expecting to hear at all. "Captain America and Director Carter took care of that in the 40s!"

"Apparently they missed a few, and I really hope whoever had to give that bit of news to Director Carter was insured." John told him. "I wanted to get back out here so I didn't read everything. I grabbed the papers and figured we could go through them for more details later, but apparently Hydra was inside Shield the entire time."

"Hydra was…. How is that possible?" Jasper murmured. "We would have known. Someone would have known. Seventy years? Someone would have seen something!"

"I don't know." John said with a shake of his head. Shield was gone. The organization he had given his life to was gone. He wanted to throw up just thinking of it. "I didn't read everything but there was something about helicarriers and something called Project Insight?"

Insight. That sounded vaguely familiar. "I think that was something I heard Fury mention after New York. An idea for stopping big threats like another alien invasion before they could happen. He wasn't really clear on it yet, and then Felix sent me out to chase bank robbers and I got kidnapped by aliens so…. Wait, this is something Fury had up and running? How long have I been gone?"

"From the date on the paper, I lost four years, so I'm thinking two for you." John said.

"How is…." No, worry about how long the two of them had been gone later. Shield was…. "Where's Fury?" Even if Shield was gone, surely the director was doing something to try to regroup his people.

"According to the papers, he was killed a day or two before this entire mess happened."

"What?" Nick was…. Jasper shook his head, not able to speak, the shock was so great.

"The dead thing, I figure he faked it and went to ground." No way John was going to believe that Fury was dead based on a newspaper report. He honestly wasn't sure if he would believe it even if he had the body in front of him. "We've got a bigger problem, though. Vic was right about Hydra. She was right about Hydra and she thought we were part of Hydra so apparently…."

"The aliens joined Hydra? I can't be a Nazi! I'm Hispanic!" The shock of that bit of news brought back his ability to speak big time. "Hydra's Nazis! I'm Hispanic! Why would the Nazis recruit someone's who's Hispanic and you…."

"Yeah. I wouldn't think the Nazis would be very interested in me either, unless somehow Nazis have became a lot more tolerant in seventy years." John said with a shake of his head.

"Nazis. And we were replaced by aliens! What are aliens doing joining the Nazis?" Jasper demanded before it hit him the position they were in. Shield was gone. They had been replaced by aliens who had decided it was a great idea to join the Nazis. They had a badly injured friend on their hands and minimal resources. "What are we going to do?"

"I wish I knew." John said. "I looked in the tiny phone book this place has. There's a motel down the road. The only idea I have is to get a room and try to get Vic patched up. If we can get her head injury tended and get her warmed up, hopefully she'll realize that it's really us and maybe between the three of us we can come up with some sort of plan."

What other option did they have? Without access to Shield and without knowing who they could trust or who would trust them thanks to the aliens who had decided becoming Nazis on top of being kidnapping aliens was a great idea, any other option they might have was pretty much non existent. Jasper gathered up the bags of supplies John had purchased while John picked up Victoria once more.

"Come on, Baby Girl. Let's get a room and get you in a warm bed." John murmured in her ear. "It's going to be okay, Vic, I promise." Shield was gone, but the three of them were together and safe and somehow they would make it through this, whatever it took.

 

The motel was small, and John was able to get a room at the back. There were no cars around, or no people to see as Jasper opened the door and they slipped inside.

"Okay. Bed." Jasper turned up the heat and then turned towards the two beds in the room. At least for a tiny, out of the way motel this place looked like it had a high degree of cleanliness. "Just a minute. I'll get the bed."

"I grabbed some new sheets and and a plastic sheet at Walmart." John told him as he settled in to one of the two chairs at the room's small table, cuddling Victoria against him. "Just a few more minutes, Baby Girl. Jasper's getting a nice bed all ready for you right now."

Jasper pulled the covers on the first bed down and then stripped the second bed, layering those items on the first bed, comforter first, then two blankets, and then both sheets, followed by the plastic sheet John had bought and then one of the new sheets. Once they got Victoria cleaned up and her wounds tended, it would be easy to cocoon her in the nest of blankets and covers to warm her up.

"That looks nice and warm, doesn't it? You're going to be fine, Vic." John said in what he hoped sounded like a reassuring tone as he laid her down on the bed and eased her shoes off, frowning at how cold her poor feet felt. "I got some more clothes for her. Can you get them?"

"Fluffy socks?" Jasper said with a slight laugh as he got the clothes, a pair of red sweatpants, matching zip up shirt, and fluffy socks. It would probably be better to get Victoria into some warm clothes before tending her wounds. At least that way she might start warming up a little while they were getting her bandaged up.

"Better than frozen feet. See if you can get some hot water so we can try to clean up her hair a little." John told him as soon as Jasper set the clothes on the bed. "Okay, Baby Girl. These aren't your usual style, I know, but they'll help you get warm, okay? I'm really sorry. Walmart didn't have a whole lot of things in the tall line."

Terror had hit Victoria as soon as she felt the mattress beneath her. Bed. She was on a bed and her eyes flew open, her heart pounding as John loomed above her, reaching out and taking her jacket off, opening her blouse again, unfastening the kevlar and moving it out of the way leaving her half naked and trapped on the bed. She couldn't fight, at least she knew she couldn't fight and win, but she lashed out anyway, clawing at John's face with the nails of one hand, hoping that at least if she couldn't stop him that she would provoke him into either killing her or knocking her into unconsciousness.

"Vic?" John was more startled than anything, although there was definitely a lot of pain too from where Victoria's nails had raked his face before he could catch her hands and he was definitely very glad she kept her nails short. "Vic, hey, it's okay. I've got some nice warm clothes for you. Red, to match those streaks. You'll like that, right? I know you think my taste in clothes can be iffy sometimes, but I swear these aren't that bad. Vic?"

"Maybe we ought to call an ambulance?" Jasper sat the ice bucket filled with hot water on the bedside table before joining John in trying to calm Victoria down. The look in her eyes was alarming to say the least, and weak and sick or not, she was suddenly fighting against John with everything she had. Sudden agitation, wasn't that a potential sign of a worsening head injury? "Victoria?"

"Vic?" What had…. And then suddenly it hit John and he paled as he backed quickly away from the bed, and waved for Jasper to back away as well. "Vic?" He whispered her name, his entire body almost shaking, realizing what she had thought that he was about to do to her. What….. He didn't know what to do. Victoria was sick and weak from her injuries. She needed their help, but if that alien had done what he was horrified to think might have been done…. "Baby Girl?" He held his hands up, moving slowly and barely resisting the urge to throw up. "It's just some warm clothes, okay?" No way she would have the strength to dress herself, even though she had somehow found the strength to try to fight him. But they had to get her into something warm fast. "Can Jasper help you get them on?" Maybe she would do better with Jasper? He was a lot smaller. Would that make her feel a tiny bit safer? But then Jasper had been replaced by an alien who had thought becoming a Nazi was a great idea, so he probably wasn't the most acceptable choice either.

"Victoria?" Jasper eased closer to the bed, barely fighting back tears as he realized what John suspected might responsible for the sudden agitation. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Let me help you get in some warm clothes, okay?" What were they going to do if she wouldn't let them help her? As weak as she was, they could physically hold her down, but the mental damage that could do, he didn't want to consider it.

She couldn't fight both of them. Victoria knew she couldn't fight both of them, and she could feel the sudden burst of strength rapidly fading. She couldn't fight them, so she closed her eyes, tears she didn't have the strength to hold in any longer running down her cheeks, with nothing she could do but wait and pray it would be over quickly.

"Here." Jasper was reluctant to touch her, but they couldn't just leave her like that, half dressed and almost totally frozen. He moved to the bed and as quickly and gently as he could eased the sweatshirt onto Victoria, zipping it securely and then getting her suit pants off and redressing her in the sweats and socks as fast as he could, with as little touching as he could manage. "Victoria? It's okay. It's okay, I promise. John?" She was crying. Jasper wasn't sure he had ever seen Victoria cry before. What were they going to do? How could they help her if she thought they were going to…. He wanted to throw up just thinking about it. Victoria really thought…. And something suddenly occurred to him and he barely was able to make it to the bathroom in time to throw up a meal he had eaten two years before. What if the aliens who had replaced them had already done something? What if that was why Victoria was so terrified of them? What if she had already been raped and thought that a second round was about to start? He gagged and threw up again at that thought even though he didn't have much left to throw up.

"Jasper?" John called his name, and he shook his head to snap himself out of freaked out friend mode and into agent mode. Figure out what to do to help Victoria. That was the only thing they could worry about right now. The rest could be dealt with later. 

"Maybe we should call an ambulance and get her to a hospital?" Jasper suggested. Victoria's eyes were closed, but tears were streaming down her cheeks so she was obviously still awake, awake and terrified. How could they help her if she was afraid of them and thought they were going to rape her?

"I don't know." John had absolutely no clue what to do. Shield was gone. Shield was gone and Hydra was a thing after seventy years, and there were aliens on the loose somewhere impersonating people. And Vic… "I don't know. No Shield and Hydra's out there." A civilian hospital, with how high up Victoria was on the Shield ladder and with how many things she knew, would she be safe if they got her there? "What about…." Who could they call for help, though? Phil, Maria, Felix, they were probably all scrambling trying to keep things together, and if the alien who had kidnapped and taken his place was still undercover, he would be afraid to chance calling Grant. "Is she still seeing that Isabelle? Isabelle's her name, isn't it?"

"She was two years ago when I let Felix send me out to find those bank robbers. I wouldn't have any idea how to contact her, though."

"What about Melinda? The people in admin are probably safe, right? Why would Hydra care about the department that provides all of our paperwork in triplicate?"

Calling Melinda for help. That was definitely a workable idea. "What do we do until she can get here?" Jasper asked. With Shield gone and their people scattered, it wasn't like Melinda could grab a plane to fly there at the drop of a hat, wherever there was. He still hadn't looked at the paper so he didn't know for sure what their location was. He had to assume based on how far they had walked to find civilization that they were somewhere fairly isolated, though, that at best it would take hours for Melinda to get to, once she found a way to get there.

Hours at the least before Melinda could arrive to help them. The injury to Vic's head couldn't go that long without some sort of attention without risking the wound getting infected. But she was crying. She was crying and obviously afraid of them. How could they help her without making that worse? "I don't know. I don't know."

"Maybe…." Jasper thought hard, trying to come up with something that could make this work. "Maybe if we go slow? And get her wrapped up first so she can start to warm up? Maybe if she's warmer, she'll be a little calmer?" Get her warm, would that help? Maybe if Victoria could tell they were trying to warm her up, that they were trying to take care of her, she would be at least a little less afraid no matter what the aliens who had replace them had done to her. Had they raped her? Her clothes had all been in place. Jasper reminded himself of that and prayed it was a good sign that she might have been spared that.

John nodded. Even if it didn't do anything else, they needed to get Victoria warmed up anyway before the cold made her injuries worse. "Vic? Baby girl?" He called to her as he slowly approached the bed. "I'm just going to get you tucked in so you can start to get warm. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Vic, I'm so, so sorry. Baby Girl, I'm so sorry." He said the last in a whisper, hesitating for a moment before reaching out and tucking the bedding around her, so she was cocooned into a snug nest of blankets.

She couldn't move. There was something wrapped around her, and she couldn't move. Victoria's eyes came open and she looked up to find John looming over her once again. "I won't betray Shield." She somehow mustered the little strength she had left to make her words firm. "You'll have to kill me. I won't betray Shield."

"Vic…." What could he say to make this right, to convince her she was safe? Honestly, John couldn't think of anything, and his eyes stung with tears of helplessness. "Baby Girl, I'm so sorry. I know you don't have any reason to trust either of us, but we're not going to hurt you. I'm so sorry, Baby Girl. Can you let us get your head fixed up for you? We're going to call Melinda and get her to come and pick you up, but it will take her some time to get here. You can't let that thing go for that long without risking it getting infected."

They were trying to get her to drop her defenses, trying to get her to let the bit of a guard she had been able to cling to down, but what could Victoria do? She couldn't move, and she was too weak to fight anymore. She closed her eyes, biting her lip as tears ran down her face, trying to brace herself for whatever they intended and hoping by some miracle she could hold out against them.

She wasn't calm, but she wasn't trying to fight them, and maybe that was the best they could hope for in this situation. John drug a chair to the bedside as Jasper got the first aid supplies situated on the bedside table while he got gloves on.

"Baby Girl, I'm sorry if this stings a little." John told her as he poured some alcohol onto a gauze pad and dabbed at the wound. Suddenly, his eyes went wide as he felt something beneath his fingers. Was that…. "Jasper, get gloves on and see if this is what I think it is."

"There's a bullet still in there." Jasper said in a horrified tone after gloving and touching the area John indicated, right behind Victoria's ear. The two men exchanged a horrified look. A bullet still in her head. What could they possibly do about that? Jasper carefully felt the wound again. Was the bullet beneath the skin, or could it possibly be imbedded in the bone? He just couldn't tell. "John…."

What could they do? Trying to get the bullet out would up the risk of infection at the least, or could make things worse if it was in bone instead of just beneath the skin. "Clean it and bandage it." He finally said. "And hope Melinda can get here fast."

Jasper nodded, and started to hand John the items he needed, more gauze to clean the wound as best he could, antibiotic ointment to cover it and then gauze bandages to wrap around Victoria's head to protect the wound and hopefully keep the bullet from moving until they could get her proper attention.

"Okay, Baby Girl. We're going to call Melinda now and get some help for you, okay?" You just try to rest and she'll be here soon." Surely it was safe to let Victoria at least doze, and maybe that would help calm her, anyway.

"John? Problem on the Melinda front." Jasper said after dialing the number. "The call's not going through. I can't tell if the line's not working or…." Jasper didn't want to think it, or say it, but he couldn't help the thought that rushed through his head anyway. What if something had happened to Melinda? Hydra had been in Shield. They had thought the admin department would be safe due to the agents who were assigned there generally having a low rank, but Melinda hadn't always been there or held that rank, not to mention her friendship with Phil and Fury, plus her mom's status. What if the department or Melinda specifically was targeted due to that?

They couldn't get through to Melinda? The pair exchanged horrified looks, before looking at the bed and the injured Victoria. Shield was gone. They had been replaced by alien imposters, and who knows who they could trust or who would trust them as a result. If they couldn't get hold of Melinda, who they felt sure would come to Victoria's rescue, what were they going to do?

"Keep trying." John said. "Maybe it's spotty coverage or something. Or she's trying to keep a low profile after what happened, and she's got her phone off temporarily." Because if it wasn't one of those options, he really had no clue what they were going to do. Victoria needed help, and the sooner the better.

 

Somehow Victoria, John, Jasper and Felix had cuddled up on the larger of the two beds, Victoria tucked securely in the center, the group needing the physical closeness after being hit once more with the memories of everything they had lost when Shield fell. Victoria let out a soft whimper as she drifted, lost in a nightmarish memory, and John and Jasper snuggled closer to her in their sleep, tears slipping down all of their faces, in sleep and memories mourning for what was lost.


End file.
